Yes Micah. As people like Dr. Olive point out, under controlled, blind listening tests, individuals prefer a neutral and transparent sound. Uncoloured.

In real world conditions all that is thrown out the window. The look of the speaker, the brand, the type of tweeter, cone material, cost etc are all biases that factors into human perception. In real world conditions, consumers have preferences and some of those are for "warm" and "laid back" speakers despite what research says. There are even some that prefer "dark" speakers . The majority of "audiophiles" is neutral sound production. Still, there is no wrong answer either way.

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I’m armed and I’m drinking. You don’t want to listen to advice from me, amigo.

Micah, someone's personal preference for it doesn't lessen the inferiority of an object.

I agree with you, John, on 90% of your posts... but I think "inferior" is going a bit far.

There are nothing but subjective choices made throughout the recording, mixing and mastering stages of producing media. And though I agree that general neutrality should be the goal in most cases, the reality is that there is no "standard". From where mics are initially placed through the final mixing and mastering, hundreds, if not thousands of subjective decisions are made by engineers.

If there are no "standards" in producing the material, there really can be no "standard" in playback. Even speakers which are (admirably) flat in an anechoic chamber are going to have different responses in different rooms in different seats.

And, though I agree with you in having electronics which have ruler-flat frequency responses and reproduce and amplify a signal without change to any attribute other than gain, I have to disagree that a speaker that a person terms "warm" is "inferior".

"Less accurate", I'll give you. But "inferior", as Micah pointed out, is not true if the speaker has the response that the designers had intended and the listener finds pleasurable.

As the head of the design team that created the Energy CB20, I have to refrain from making any subjective comments on sound quality. I can tell you that the design goals between Energy and Axiom were not miles apart. A far more elightening comparison would be the M3 vs. the CB20. Another important question to take into account is how the speaker will be used. Is it meant to be able to stand on it's own, or is it best suited to use with a subwoofer?

Andrew

Originally Posted By: Micah

Now take the engineers who put together the Energy CB20's and liken them to the team responsible with developing the Toyota Prius. They could care less about how fast they can get around a track 100 times. Their whole objective is to get their car to go 100 miles on a single gallon of gas.

I am always disappointed in the sound quality of all early NIN albums, with the exception of "Downward Spiral," which is in the top of my list of demo CDs for my system(depending on the audience.) Most others sound way to muddied, compressed or something for lack of expertise in describing sound.

HD-DVD or BR is another matter though. the "Somewhere in Time" performance is an example of how a live performance can actually sound hundreds of times better than 99% of studio CDs.

A repeat of what others say, but throwing in my opinion to add weight to their words.

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With great power comes Awesome irresponsibility.

As the head of the design team that created the Energy CB20, I have to refrain from making any subjective comments on sound quality. I can tell you that the design goals between Energy and Axiom were not miles apart...

Admittedly my example was exagerated for centext effect. The real point was that different brands have different goals, and to call brand X's goal inferior isn't something I am personally comfortable doing because it may very well be that the sound brand X achieved matched the goal they set out to reproduce in the first place.

In other words, if it was the design goal to sound exactly like the M22, then you failed. But if they reproduce music the way you had intended for them to do, then who am I to call it a failure, or consider them inferior?

Maybe I wouldn't like it as much as I would the M22, but obviously there are those who do.

Mark, I did in fact use the term "inaccurate". Micah introduced the more inflammatory "inferior", and I simply pointed out the truism that someone's preference for some object can't lessen its inferiority.